We are engaged in research across the spectrum from blue sky to start-ups.

We invite you to explore some of our projects below in nature-inspired Smart Systems & Advanced Analytics

Current Projects

SFI

Applications of Evolutionary Design (App'ED)
is a Science Foundation Ireland Investigator Award (13/IA/1850) to Prof Michael O'Neill and includes collaborations with Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs Ireland and ESB Networks in the domains of Smart Networks and Smart Grid.

SFI

Natural Computing for
Asset Management & Trading

brings natured-inspired algorithms such as Grammatical Evolution, Genetic Programming and Social & Swarm Computing to problems drawn from computational finance including high-frequency algorithmic trading.

SFI

Evolutionary & Semantic Methods for Search Based Software Engineering
sees the application of nature-inspired Smart Systems to Software Engineering with a particular focus on financial services software in collaboration with Fidelity Investments.

SFI

ICON-UCD Advanced Analytics
is a collaboration between ICON Plc, the UCD Centre for Business Analytics and the UCD Natural Computing Research & Applications Group using Smart Systems Analytics in the domain of Clinical Trial Management.

EvoMed Analytics
is a start up spearheaded by Dr Alexandros Agapitos in Health Analytics.

Past Projects

SFI

Evolution in Dynamic Environments with Grammatical Evolution (EDGE)
is a Science Foundation Ireland Investigator Award to Prof Michael O'Neill, which ran from 2009-2014, and included a collaboration with Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs Ireland in the domain of Smart Networks. Click here for more details on the project and its outputs.

SFI

Semantics in Genetic Programming
was an Irish Research Council PhD scholarship award to Quang Uy Nguyen which focused on the development of semantic-aware search operators for genetic programming.

SFI

Meta-grammars and Grammatical Evolution for dynamic environments
was a Science Foundation Ireland Research Frontiers award to Prof Michael O'Neill, which ran from 2006-2009. Meta-Grammars are proposed as a novel approach to improve the evolvability of the grammar-based Genetic Programming approach of Grammatical Evolution. This will allow Grammatical Evolution to be more effectively applied to non-stationary (dynamic) problem domains such as those found in telecommunications (e.g. call routing), and financial modelling (e.g. risk management systems).

SFI

Grammatical Representations for Evolutionary Design
was a Science Foundation Ireland Research Frontiers award (2007-2010) in collaboration with Dr Elizabeth Shotton and Dr Ciaran McNally. The natural process of biological evolution has served as a significant source of inspiration in the development of powerful problem solving tools by Computer Scientists. In particular, much success has been enjoyed through the application of these Evolutionary Algorithms to Design (e.g. analog circuits, music, graphic art and animation etc) through an artificial survival of the fittest process. This Evolutionary approach to Design has resulted in the most successful form of Artificial Intelligence to date, by routinely providing human-competitive and in some cases patentable design solutions. In this research we investigate the application of a powerful and novel Evolutionary Algorithm, Grammatical Evolution, developed in Ireland to the area of Architectural Design.

UCD Natural Computing Research & Applications Group
Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School
University College Dublin
Carysfort Avenue, Blackrock
A94 XF34